Dinobot

The name or term Dinobot refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see Dinobot (disambiguation).

The Dinobots are an Autobot subgroup.

Call them the boy-band of the Autobots and prepare for a world of pain. From left to right: Slag, Grimlock, Swoop, Sludge and Snarl.

The Dinobots are a rowdy, arrogant, lowbrow, disobedient band of warriors that some Autobots would rather scrap than deal with. They're also one of the most devastatingly powerful and close-knit combat units in the Autobot army, being incredibly powerful in robot mode and taking alternate modes based on dinosaurs, the most powerful creatures to ever roam the Earth.

Most of them dislike Optimus Prime, so whether they follow the Autobot leader's orders depends on what those orders are. This attitude extends to the rest of the Autobot army, with most being viewed as too weak or cowardly to take the steps needed to get the nastier jobs done. Only a handful of individuals are viewed by the Dinobots as true allies and even they don't really understand them. This attitude has very much pushed the Dinobots to the fringes of Autobot society, which has resulted in an extremely powerful sense of camaraderie and friendship among the team. Few Autobots are closer. As so many battered, bruised and beaten Decepticons can attest, if you confront one Dinobot, you confront them all.

The group's members are:

• Grimlock (the leader)
• Slag (the bad boy)
• Sludge (the dim one)
• Snarl (the quiet one)
• Swoop (the sensitive one)

They occasionally gain extra members, who have included:

• Paddles (the "Pete Best" one)
• Grimmaster (the one-man band)
• Skar (the tragic motivating backstory (aka, the "Stu Sutcliffe" one))

• Slash (the clever girl)

“	We watch each other's back, we stick together through thick and thin, and no one ever tells us what to do!	”
—Grimlock sums his group up, Maximum Dinobots #2

History

Generation 1 cartoon continuity

The Transformers cartoon

The Three Dinobots, immediately after accidentally killing the Invisible Swordsman.

Inspired by the dinosaur fossils found by Ironhide in the volcanic caves near the Ark, Wheeljack and Ratchet designed and built new robots in their image, dubbing them the Dinobots. Grimlock, Slag, and Sludge were built first. S.O.S. Dinobots After some initial troubles, their performance pleased Optimus Prime enough that he had two more built, adding Snarl and Swoop to the ranks. War of the Dinobots

From left to right: Terrible Dactyl, Stego, Bronto Thunder, Tricero and Ghengis Rex

The Dinobots' role was simply to pulverize anyone or anything that was too strong for the Autobots to handle on their own. In the process, they frequently mouthed off, rebelled and started brawls inside of Autobot Headquarters (and the occasional dinosaur-shaped city).

During one incident, the Dinobots' destructive clumsiness caused damage to Autobot HQ and almost led to Teletraan I getting caught in the crossfire. The Autobots decided they needed a bigger place to roam freely, so they relocated them to a newly-discovered island filled with living dinosaurs. The Dinobots' newfound paradise was quickly invaded by the Decepticons, and Megatron caused a stampede of dinosaurs to trap the Dinobots in a tar pit. Dinobot Island, Part 1

At one point, the Dinobots became sick of only being used as the hammer of the Autobot army, so they deserted, saying that they would fight when they wanted to. However, the Dinobots were called in when the Autobots and the Decepticons began suffering from Cybertonium depletion. During the battle with the Constructicons, they were accidentally sent to Cybertron, where they briefly reduced Shockwave to the role of chew toy. Desertion of the Dinobots, Part 1 However, Shockwave altered the Dinobots' memory circuits and forced them to work in the Cybertonium Pit. Spike Witwicky and Carly managed to rescue them, and the Dinobots decided to follow Optimus Prime's orders... until such time that they decided not to do so. Desertion of the Dinobots, Part 2

Notes

• The Dinobots are the first Transformers whose creation is shown in the cartoon. It seems simple enough: The Autobots simply construct their bodies, flick the switch, and they're animated. Wheeljack later upgrades their brains, after which they display sentience. However, the later episode "The Key to Vector Sigma, Part 1" heavily implies that there's no way to bring a Transformer to life without the use of the supercomputer Vector Sigma. Still other episodes would show the creation of Trypticon and the Technobots without the use of Vector Sigma. For more on this issue, see Reproduction.
• Early on in the cartoon, the Dinobots are played as very dangerous (though dim) wildcards, whose great power makes them a huge advantage to the Autobots when they can be persuaded to cooperate. However, beginning with The Transformers: The Movie and in the following third season, the Dinobots are portrayed almost exclusively as comic relief: goofy childlike morons whose (arguably even greater) stupidity made them a detriment to be babysat, rather than an advantage to be courted.
• The commercials (and package art) for the Dinobots show their swords, Slag's horns, and Swoop's lower beak and missiles as being chromed like the Diaclone versions. However, the actual release versions have these parts as bare red. This is due to the swords and horns being changed to soft plastic for safety reasons (it was either that or retool them blunt like Blitzwing's sword), as the chrome plating does not bond to soft plastic. Swoop's jaw and missiles probably didn't need this, but that's gang-molding for you.

• The 2005 Grimlock and Swoop two-pack was originally intended to portray the Generation 1 characters but ended up as part of the Energon toyline instead, representing new characters by this wiki's classification.
• The S-names are to show how they're their own group, while Grimlock breaks the pattern to show he's the boss.
• And the most obvious point; this collection of dinosaur robots has a pterosaur in their number, thus making the name kind of inaccurate. Those two animals are entirely different branches of Ornithodira; calling a Pteranodon a dinosaur is like calling a cougar a nimravid because both are felids. Granted, "Avemetatarsaliabots" is nowhere near as fluid to say as "Dinobots"... but still, worth noting.

Foreign names

• Japanese: Dinobot (ダイノボット Dainobotto)
• Hungarian: Dinobotok (everywhere else) Vasállatok (first The Movie dub, "Iron-animals") Dínók (second The Movie dub, "Dinos")
• Italian: Nuovo Dinorobots (Classics)
• Mandarin: Kǒnglóng Jīngāng (恐龙金刚, "Dinosaur Vajra"), Jīqì Kǒnglóng (机器恐龙, "Machine Dinosaur")
• Portuguese: Dinobóticos (Portugal comic), Robodinos (Brazil comic)